I knew we had irregularly spaced studs so was prepared for a tricky installation process. Ended up mounting and painting a bunch of 2 x 1 boards to the existing studs, then bolting the playground structure to those. It was harder than I thought it would be (old houses, am I right?) and added another $100 to the cost by the time I got done buying paint and stuff. All of this struggle was essentially self-inflicted, so I’m not blaming Catastrophic Creations for that.
However, putting the structure up sucked, to be perfectly frank. Getting the screws into the bracket thingys was so stressful. If I had it to do again, I would have replaced the screws that came with the product for something 3x stronger, bc trust me, if you’re using a drill with a screwdriver bit, you WILL be at risk of stripping those screws. In particular, the ones that are inserted underneath the brackets — nightmare. It’s nice that the piece is constructed to hide the **** head, but best of luck getting the angle right so the **** actually goes in all the way. Otherwise installation was a snap. But there were 15 of those dang brackets! I’m pretty happy with how it all came out. We didn’t get everything perfect and pretty, but I think the cats will love it (they’re taking some time to adjust to it, which isn’t too surprising). Idk if I’d do it again. It was so much money and stress. I did have room for pressure mounted floor-to-ceiling cat trees and probably that’s what I should have done. That said, this product is inarguably gorgeous — real wood, solid, aesthetic. So maybe once I’ve stopped feeling salty about the install I won’t have as many regrets!
Oh, and we are “saving” the floating sisal posts to install one by one over the next year or so, to extend the novelty factor.
